Incubators and radiant warmers have both been used to maintain the appropriate body temperature of small or premature infants. An incubator provides an enclosure, generally transparent, within which heated air is circulated to minimize heat loss of the infant. Heat is transferred to the infant via convective heat transfer. A major drawback of the typical incubator is that it provides for only limited access by a care provider to the infant. More particularly, the incubator typically provides a large access door for placing the infant into or removing the infant from the incubator. However, it will be appreciated that opening such a door causes rapid cooling of the interior of the incubator, and therefore should be opened as seldom as possible in order to maintain the appropriate temperature of the incubator interior and hence the infant. Thus, most incubators are provided with means of supplemental access in the form of hand ports or small entry doors for routine care of the infant to minimize heat loss during care of the infant. Such small entry doors and hand ports, however, are quite limiting in that a care provider does not have complete access to and mobility with respect to an infant within the incubator.
Radiant warmers, on the other hand, provide for continuous and open access to an infant to accommodate a high frequency of care provider intervention. In radiant warmers heat is transferred to the infant via radiative heat transfer. Radiant warmers typically include infrared heaters which emit infrared energy which is absorbed by the skin of the infant. The infrared heater is typically mounted to a support which is suspended above the infant support surface of the radiant warmer. There is no canopy or enclosure as in incubators. Radiant warmers thus provide open access to infants requiring surgery, for example, or other procedures requiring multiple care providers to have access to and unobstructed sight of the infant. However, while incubators are typically provided with humidification mechanisms to raise the level of relative humidity within the incubator, thus contributing to a reduction in heat loss from evaporation of fluids from the infant, radiant warmers due to their open nature and the mode of heat transfer employed cause infant evaporative water losses which are significantly greater than those encountered by an infant within an incubator. Another disadvantage of the radiant warmer, when compared to an incubator, is that the infant is directly exposed to ambient nursery contaminants in the form of noise and unfiltered air. The incubator, on the other hand, being an enclosure for the infant, reduces the effects of nursery environmental conditions on the infant.